A Time of Exile - Katharine Kerr [25]
“Any stranger is welcome to milk from my flock. But if you can spare some medicine, one of our women has a bad case of boils.”
The villagers tended Aderyn’s horse and mule while Wargal took him to his own home, which had no furniture except for three big pottery jars near the tiny hearth and the straw mattress he shared with his wife. Hanging on the wall were a few bronze pots, a couple of knives of the same metal, and some rough cloth sacks. Aderyn sat down next to Wargal in the place of honor by the hearth while villagers crowded in for a look at this amazing event, a stranger in their village. After some polite conversation over bowls of goat’s milk, the woman with boils was duly treated in the midst of the curious crowd. Other villagers came forward to look over the herbs and ask shy questions, but most were beyond his help, because the real plague in this village was malnutrition. Driven by fear of the Eldidd lords, they eked out a miserable living on land so poor that no one else wanted it.
Although Aderyn would have preferred to eat his own food and spare theirs, Wargal insisted that he join him and his wife in their dinner of goat’s-milk cheese and thin cracker bread.
“I’m surprised you don’t have your winter crops in yet,” Aderyn remarked.
“Well, we won’t be here to harvest them. We had a long council a few days ago, and we’re going to move north. The cursed Blue-eyes get closer every day. What if one of their headmen decides to build one of those forts along the road?”
“And decides you should be slaves to farm for him? Leaving’s the wise thing to do.”
“There’s plenty of open land farther north, I suppose. Ah, it’s so hard to leave the pastures of your ancestors! There’s a god in the spring nearby, too, and I only hope he won’t be angry with us for leaving him.” He hesitated for a moment. “We thought of leaving last spring, but it was too much of a wrench, especially for the women. Now we have another reason.”
“Indeed?”
Wargal considered him, studying Aderyn’s face in the flickering firelight.
“You seem like a good man,” Wargal said at last. “I don’t suppose you have any herbs to take a brand off a man’s face?”
“I only wish I did. If you’re harboring a runaway, you’d best move fast in case his lord comes looking for him.”
“So I told the others. We were thinking of packing tomorrow.” Wargal glanced around the hut. “We don’t have much to pack or much to lose by leaving—well, except the god in the spring, of course.”
Aderyn felt a sudden cold shudder of dweomer down his back. His words burned in his mouth, an undeniable warning that forced itself into sound.
“You must leave tomorrow. Please, believe me—I have magic, and you must leave tomorrow and travel as fast as you can. I’ll come with you on the road a ways.”
His face pale, Wargal stared at him, then crossed two fingers to ward off the evil eye, in case Aderyn had that, too.
On the morrow, leaving took far longer than Aderyn wanted. Although the village’s few possessions were easily packed onto bovine and human backs, the goats had to be rounded up. Finally a ragged group of refugees, about eight families with some twenty children among them, the cows, the herd of goats, and six little brown dogs to keep the stock in line, went to the holy spring and made one last sacrifice of cheese to the god while Aderyn kept a fretful watch on the path behind them. By the time they moved out of the valley, it was well after noon, and the smaller children were already tired and crying from the smell of trouble in the air. Aderyn piled the littlest ones into his saddle and walked, leading the horse. Wargal and a young man, Ibretin, fell in beside him. On Ibretin’s cheek was the brand that marked him as a lord’s property.
“If you think they’ll catch us, O Wise One,” Ibretin said to Aderyn. “I’ll go back and let them kill me. If they find us, they’ll take the whole tribe back with them.”
“There’s no need for that